VIMEO TO ALLOW VIDEO MAKERS TO CHARGE FOR THEIR WORK

If you think that people might pay to see your video, there’s now a place where you can sell it — and cut out the middleman (almost). At the SXSW conference in Austin, TX, the video website Vimeo today (Tuesday) launched Vimeo On Demand, allowing its Vimeo Pro members (annual subscription: $199) to sell their productions directly to the public for whatever they think they’re worth. The creators will be able to keep 90 percent of the earnings after “transaction costs” are deducted. Those costs could be significant. Finding a way to offer content for, say, a dollar or less has been the bane of media entrepreneurs, inasmuch as credit-card companies’ minimum transaction fees can often be greater than the sale itself. Vimeo said that the minimum charge will be 99 cents, payable via credit card or PayPal, but it did not indicate how much of that 99 cents the processors will be keeping. It did indicate that the videos could be displayed on either the producer’s website, on Vimeo’s or on both and that the producers would be able to select the countries where their videos can be sold or rented. Said Vimeo chief executive Kerry Trainor in a statement: “With the addition of Vimeo On Demand, creators can now use Vimeo to control the way they earn revenue and retain a significant portion of the proceeds.”

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